Month: September 2013

In this blog post, Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation refers to “shutdown anxiety,” what all those pathetic statists in Washington and throughout the land are experiencing in regards to the federal government’s possibly shutting down.

In fact, if we’re lucky, the government shut-down will be permanent and all those non-essential personnel will be permanently laid off.

No longer would American taxpayers be burdened by the taxes needed to fund those non-essential people and their non-essential functions. Equally good, all these non-essential people would find jobs in the private sector, making them productive citizens rather than parasitic citizens living off the taxes that the private sector pays.

Thus, a government shutdown would be doubly positive. It would leave more savings in private hands and increase the number of productive people in the private sector. Increases in savings and productive capital are the key to rising standards of living for people in a society.

Will it happen? Unfortunately, no. Republicans are as committed to statism as Democrats are.

That’s because Republicans are as FOS as Democrats. Republicans aren’t interested in increasing the standard of living of the rest of the population, they’re interested in increasing their power-grabs, their little fiefdoms and their bank accounts (from the loot stolen from the actual workers and producers of America).

And Hornberger is right about the Republicans’ love for health care socialism. They won’t touch Medicare or Medicaid, or medical licensure and all the horrible regulations the feds impose on every aspect of the medical care industry which reduce the quality of medical care in America.

But Republicans do care about the lobbyists taking them out to lunch, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries’ contributions to the Republicans’ election campaigns and so forth, just like the Democrats.

ObamaCareless will of course make things even worse, and after that fails which it already is, then “single-payer” or Obama’s SovietCare will further turn the U.S. into a full police-state dictatorship, just like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

While Justin Raimondo and Dave Lindorf understand that America is now a police state, even with the NSA revelations there are many people who are still in denial. They just don’t want to believe that Americans could consider such a way of life. As Larken Rose put it in this lengthy video documentary, yes, it can happen here. It IS happening here, for crying out loud!

And yes, this ObamaCare or “single payer,” whatever it’s going to be, these extremist means of aggression inflicted by the State against the people and call it “health care” — yes, this is all part of America’s police state future.

And yes, it is “extremist” to give the government the power to forcibly make you report your private medical matters to the government, to allow government bureaucrats to have the “authority” over what doctors you may or may not see or patients you may or may not have, or how one wants to pay one’s doctor. Those who give the government the power to order you to have to buy a health insurance policy are extremists. Ya hear that, Roberts? (So what caused the Chief Bureaucrat to go so far off the deep end? Was it the NSA snoopy-pooping? Too much caviar? Or too many visits to the Supreme Hot Tub, perhaps?)

Roberts went to Harvard, you know. Maybe that was it. But I digress.

So now, Washington’s Blog has a post detailing how the government psychopaths are labeling even peaceful, harmless people as “terrorists.” One item that caught my eye was this link to an article stating that if you don’t have a Facebook page then you are “suspicious.” Like not having one of those things means you are a psychopath. The article points to accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes who didn’t have a Statebook page (but he did have psycho-meds, thanks to Big Psychiatry). And the Norwegian loony-tunes Anders Breivik who killed 77 people but didn’t have a Statebook page, is also cited as an example.

And it isn’t just the gubmint with these kinds of irrational spewings. It’s non-gubmint civilians, like bosses who are considering job applicants. “You don’t have a Facebook page? You must be a psychopathic murderous monster! Next?”

But much of this increasing nonsense in our society mainly has to do with America’s increasing dependence on the government — federal, state, and local — for EVERYTHING! But as the lazy, infantilized, public school-brainwashed, high fructose corn syrup-addicted and texting zombie Americans out there continue to let the real monsters of society — government bureaucrats and their armed enforcers — intrude upon, invade and rape their lives, the country will devolve even further into chaos and ruin.

If we had any sense, we would let the government shut down and stop worrying about it. Think of all the freedom we would have (like in the old days).

Now, as the feds commit one incompetent or criminal act after another, Karl Denninger of Market Ticker explains that he is fed up, and is going on strike. He will legally stop “contributing” to the feds, after all the wealth that has been taken from him via “taxation.” He is saying that he is just going to stop making an income so that there won’t be anything for the government to take from him in tax-thefts. I am not exactly sure how he will be able to feed himself and his family, however. While Denninger will not concentrate on financial issues on his website (which apparently has been the content by which he derives an income), he will continue to write about the political goings on, about the shenanigans our Congressfelons are up to. Denninger writes:

I hope, pray for and encourage others to also peacefully withdraw their consent. If enough of us who are the producers in this nation do so then government will have no choice but to bow to our will or collapse. My decision in this regard, if ratified by concurrence of just a small percentage of the population, represents what I believe is the only remaining lawful and peaceful way to accomplish that goal.

If there are an insufficient number of others willing to also participate then my personal conviction that it is unacceptable to fund the screwing of others, whether it be financially or through actual acts of violence, will be demonstrated to be that of a tiny minority.

I accept that this is not only possible, it’s likely.

But should that be the case then this nation does not deserve to survive as a Constitutional Republic — and in the end, it will not, becoming something much darker, uglier and unworthy of any of my support.

There is only one way to know which of the two possibilities is true — and that is to act, and see who also acts. To lead not through exhortation (or worse, extortion) but rather by example. To see who chooses to not only continue to consent but actively supports the murder of others, physical violence served upon those who simply wish to enjoy their unalienable rights and the financial******of our own citizens en-masse – especially our children and young adults.

If and when things change I will reconsider my position and lower my middle finger.

But not before.

I therefore choose to reduce the ability of our government to tax my income to as close to an effective zero as I can reasonably achieve in keeping with what I enjoy doing, which is putting before the people a chronology of lies, frauds and scams in the hope that others wake up.

But I just can’t see very many people participating in that form of activism and going on strike. Just how the hell is someone who refuses to produce and do labor (for the government) going to be able to sustain one’s own life in any meaningful and healthy way? But then, with ObomberCare and being subjected to government doctor bureaucrats, pretty soon none of us will be healthy, so I guess it won’t matter.

Ron Paul writes about the anti-small business Internet sales tax, known bureaucratically as the “Marketplace Fairness Act” and rammed through the Senate in May in the dead of night, which is when U.S. Senators usually ram through dishonest legislation. (What legislation isn’t dishonest?) No big surprise: The big cronies sales outlets with both brick-and-mortar and online presence support this anti-small business crony-crap. And House Republicans, led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, will conjure up their own House alternative, but will not reject the idea as it should be rejected. It’s never enough for these covetous, voracious parasites, it’s never enough for them.

If you think that calling your congressman or senator will really do any good, to defeat the Internet sales tax or ObamaCareless, Larken Rose has this video on how those people in Washington see you.

More cronyism: Adan Salazar of Infowars has these charts of how the big insurance companies’ stocks are already rising thanks to ObomberCare.

Sheldon Richman gives us Lysander Spooner’s take on the national debt. It’s not our debt, as we didn’t participate in the contracts which went into incurring such a monstrosity. Those acts of irresponsibility are with the gang who have occupied the smelly chambers of the U.S. Congress.

Like the the Internet tax thieves, the tax-eating judicial hacks also look for ways to steal from the people, including from the victims of the police terrorists in blue. Here is William Grigg on that.

Finally, on All Things Considered yesterday, there was a report on many homeowners in coastal areas being in shock over their skyrocketing flood insurance rates now, especially because the U.S. government phased out flood insurance subsidies. You can listen to the report here:

And that reminded me of Peter Schiff’s testimony last year before a House subcommittee on whether or not the government should extend to multi-family homeowners the same loan guarantees that they provided for single-family homeowners. The issue of flood insurance came up. And, frankly, if you don’t want skyrocketing flood insurance, then don’t live in flood-prone areas, or in a city near the coast which is below sea level! (Like, duh!)

While the Rulers debate raising the debt ceiling because they can’t control their selfishness, and attempt to terrify the masses of a possible government shutdown (like that’s a bad thing?), and as the Republicans led by Speaker John Boehner Keynes go on to cave and vote to fund and not repeal ObamaCare, there are other issues being debated in the murder capital of the world.

For those who have been hearing about the U.S. CONgress’s proposed shield law for journalists, no, it is not to protect journalists. It is to protect the government.

It has to do with suppressing dissent.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to define who a “real journalist” is, and she says that she won’t support a shield law that covers “everyone who has a blog.” What she means is that elitists such as she do not like alternative media investigative reporters and bloggers who are actually doing the real reporting that the mainstreamers won’t do, and practicing real journalism: actually asking the who, what, how, why, when and where, actually digging into an issue to get the story behind the story.

In contrast, the mainstream media reporters, writers and editors who merely unthinkingly repeat what government bureaucrats tell them — these are the ones who Feinstein et al. want to “protect.”

They certainly don’t want to “protect” investigative journalists such as Michael Hastings and Andrew Breitbart, and they don’t want to protect other alternative media journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Alex Jones. Of course not.

Because these Establishment politicians want to protect the secrets of the Regime, the criminality, the corruption. Obviously, they don’t want to protect media outlets such as WikiLeaks, or whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, William Binney or Sibel Edmonds.

No, only protect the propagandists of the MSM, the ones who take the word of government bureaucrats as The Truth, without question and act as stenographers for the State.

But the First Amendment exists to protect an already pre-existing right: the right to freedom of speech and thought, freedom of conscience, the freedom of the Press. And yes, Dianne, the First Amendment protects “anyone who has a blog.” That 17-year-old blogger down the street from you, Dianne, who may get some sort of tip from an insider on the latest act of criminality by you and your fellow Senators, yeah, that blogger has as much right to protect his source as do Glenn Greenwald and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Only fascist elitists think otherwise.

In my view, the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” as it is written in the First Amendment, is a part of our freedom of the Press. In other words, each and every individual has a right to “freedom of the Press,” and it is not up to some government bureaucrat to define who is a member of the Press, who is a real “journalist,” because anyone who wants to be a member of “the Press” has a right to do so. No “credentials,” no licensure or fee, no government approval!

Congress cannot pass a law removing any substance from the right to free speech or freedom of the press. And “the press” did not mean “news organizations” in the founding era. According to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, it literally means the printing press. In other words, the technology to create the printed word.

…

And of course, printing press would extend to modern technologies that serve the same purpose, such as the Internet.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press link together. Essentially, freedom of the press protects the dissemination of “speech” via the press, and both apply to the people, not a select few picked out by Congress.

“It being one of the great fundamental principles of the American governments, that the people are the sovereign, and those who administer the government their agents, and servants, not their kings and masters, it would have been a political solecism to have permitted the smallest restraint upon the right of the people to inquire into, censure, approve, punish or reward their agents according to their merit, or demerit. The constitution, therefore, secures to them the unlimited right to do this, either by speaking, writing, printing, or by any other mode of publishing, which they may think proper. This being the only mode by which the responsibility of the agents of the public can be secured, and practically enforced, the smallest infringement of the rights guaranteed by this article, must threaten the total subversion of the government.” [Emphasis added]

So, Congress has no authority to define “journalist,” and it doesn’t even have the power to pass a “shield law.” The First Amendment already provides one. Clearly, federal power to compel those engaging in free speech through the press to disclose sources or documents would abridge that fundamental right.

This bill not only violates the First Amendment, but it assumes undelegated powers.

Hey, Dianne, here’s the thing on that First Amendment business. I get to define what you do for a living. And if I decide to define what you do for a living is to be a mewling apologist for the national-security community and a lapdog for the surveillance state, I get to do that, and I get to do it in a newspaper, or video, or on-line, or on a pamphlet stapled to a telephone pole outside your door, if I so choose. You get to sit there, collect your government salary, raise money from plutocrats, and shut…the…hell…up.

Which part of “Congress shall make no law…” do you not understand?

There must be something of a cognitive deficiency going on with today’s politicians (and their Goebbels in the media).

Our fanatically Keynesian President Barack Obama believes that governments should spend money they don’t have and put the country into debt. So he is whining to Republicans to continue raising the debt ceiling so the federal government can continue on its wild spending spree.

And Obama has the nerve to say that the opposing Party’s not wanting to do the President’s bidding by irresponsibly raising the debt ceiling is “extorting” the President. He claims that it is extortion when some of the people’s representatives tell the Dear Leader to stop stealing from our grandchildren!

This Obama person is just as bad as the Bush that preceded him. And the power-grabbers of the Federal Reserve and the banksters are just as dishonest and irresponsible.

But they are merely reflecting the general population now, the selfish, impatient and id-oriented population of America.

And some people are speculating that Janet Yellen, Vice Chairman of the Fed’s Board of Governors, will be picked to be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, replacing Ben Bernanke.

Like Bernanke, Ms. Yellen apparently believes in using the apparatus of government intervention to control economic matters. And she certainly favors Keynesian policies, “easy money” and continuing with the self-indulgent spending habits.

The Economic Collapse Blog’s Michael Snyder notes how Ms. Yellen was totally clueless in 2007, really believing that those artificial housing and other stimulus would be “still likely to achieve a relatively smooth adjustment path.” And then in 2010 she testified that she did not see the meltdown and collapse coming, as the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, also did not see it coming.

And in response to The Bernank’s recent “no taper” announcement, Ron Paul asked, morally what right does Bernanke have “to take away 2% of our purchasing power deliberately? What right does he have to punish the elderly who save money?”

Dr. Paul warned against further destruction of the dollar and malinvestment caused by artificial interest rates.

Actually, as long as any kind of economic activity is artificial, or artificially “stimulated” by monopolistic and unaccountable governmental intrusions, there’s a good chance that that will cause malinvestment.

And the other part of that is the intrusions are coming from some central planner, such as the Fed and its high-and-mighty Chairman or from an act of Congress, for that matter. What you will then have is “planned chaos,” as Ludwig von Mises pointed out.

In contrast, with freedom and free markets consumers and producers are left free to plan their own economic matters. In a system of more freedom and randomness, you have less chaos because such a system is freed from the destructive intrusions of those bureaucratic buffoons and parasites and their “fatal conceit” that guides them.

But sadly, the majority of people in America do not appreciate that freedom, independence and responsibility, in our modern age of decadence and covetousness.

America has become a society in which irresponsibility and immediate gratification are institutionalized, praised and rewarded. And that is exactly what the Keynesian economics of Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman and millions of others promotes.

The truth is, those folks of the Keynesian way of thinking don’t even practice economics — their love is for politics and in strengthening the political class.

You see, at some point private economic matters in America became politicized. And it was the politicians who exploited crises, panics and economic downturns and they then sold a bunch of snake oil to the desperate masses as a means of the politicians grabbing more and more political and police power over the people.

And, coinciding with the decline of critical thinking in America, the politicians’ minions in academia and the Press supported the ideas of deficit spending and promoting debts as a way to get out of recessions and depressions.

Reflecting the mental laziness reinforced by government schooling, it makes the unthinking academics and pundits feel good when they are relieved of having to make any effort in solving the problems that caused those recessions and depressions in the first place, and instead they can just get their monetary meds right away. (Hmmm. Can we get Big Pharma in on this?)

But these kinds of irresponsible, immediate gratification habits are like drug addictions, and like drug addicts the spending addicts put their entire family into the poor house. And this is what the power-grabbing politicians want, encouraging the people to then beg them for more “easy money” and other wealth-redistribution schemes to bail them out.

As long as they are further enriched and empowered over others, the politicians and bureaucrats get what they crave with each new power-grabbing vote in Congress, just as the Fed’s manipulations empower the banksters to get new money to fund their bonuses while the politicians’ Fed-stimulated inflation steals even more from the people.

However, America’s immediate gratification society can be seen in other areas now. For example, the cops and prosecutors, and “national security” bureaucrats who get away with warrantless searches and stopping and frisking innocent people. Why wait for a judge to sign a warrant? That takes too long. They crave to do their searches immediately. And even when there’s no suspicion of specific individuals they want to search anyway. And why go through the trouble of coming across some actual individual who is suspicious to then do searches of his emails or phone records? Instead let’s search through and collect and keep a database of all Americans’ emails and phone records, and that way we can then find our needle in the haystack.

So that is a current example of the kind of immediate gratification mindset that Americans have developed in many areas of life — not just economic — over the past century, especially since the implementation of the income tax and the Federal Reserve System.

But such behaviors are those of irresponsibility, and only promote the satisfying of one’s immediate desires with total disregard for ethics and for the future (or for the rights of innocent people in the case of the “security” fanatics).

People want “easy money,” and they want it now. (Especially the banksters.) Don’t wait until you have enough money saved or have enough of an income to afford to buy a house — get a loan NOW and get a mortgage now anyway, and get that house. And spend as much as you can on your credit card, and put yourself in debt. Who cares about your family’s future, as long as you get that stuff you want now.

And the banksters want easy money and bailouts, because they know that regardless how irresponsible their lending practices and their investments are (with their customers‘ money, just as Congress is with taxpayers’ money), they are guaranteed by the government to be free from bankruptcy. And they will keep their jobs (while you lose yours).

You see, such a Keynesian mindset is especially thriving in those who want to have some central authority, the Fed or Congress, to act as “stimulator” of the population’s prosperity, and to dish out food stamps and other goodies, as well as artificially-stimulated interest rates and “easy money” (for the banksters).

Sadly, the masses are being fed the false belief that they are benefiting from these government bureaucrats and those monetary central planners like Helicopters Ben and Janet who hand out the easy money like candy.

But, as Lew Rockwell recently noted, it is the State and its agents who are enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else, while the advocates of freedom and independence, such as Ron Paul, are the ones who want the people liberated from the State’s tentacles and from its exploitation of the people’s labor and livelihoods.

It would be easier to get more people to see that, if only they could overcome their long-ingrained habits of short-sightedness, and their blind faith in the State as a savior.

Each day that goes by there is yet another news item telling us of yet another employer that is converting its (or some of its) full-time employees into part-time, or about the new delay in small business insurance exchanges being delayed because of software problems. The problems are mainly because of government’s incompetence and inefficiency and the parasitic and impoverishing effects of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “ObamaCare.”

Given how devious and cynical in nature our Rulers are, these sociopaths, gangsters, misfits and unemployable law school graduates-turned-bureaucrats, it should be of no surprise that they would encourage insurance and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists to write this ghastly legislation as they did, and have congressional committee staffers write up conflicting crap that will confuse businesses and insurers.

The real reason tyrants like Obama want to give the government complete control over everyone’s medical matters is this: When government commissars and apparatchiks have access to all the details of your private medical information, it is easier for them to weed out the “undesirables.” It is easier to “take care of” those who are known dissidents and opponents of the Regime’s agenda.

When there is the complete government control over everyone’s medical matters which the control freaks desire so much, there will be a two-tier system: GoodCare for the Rulers and their minions, and BadCare for the rest of us schnooks. Here are two articles on the kind of SovietCare craved by Barack Obomber:

America is becoming more and more oppressive, like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, whether the naive deniers out there want to admit it or not. We have a 100-mile border and coastal “Constitution-Free Zone,” with searches of your laptops and phones and private effects without probable cause, and the government’s trying to make it more and more difficult for Americans to leave this prison state. And we have the NSA illegally eavesdropping on millions without warrants or suspicion, the bureaucratic Berlin Wall, the “FEMA camps,” Jamit Napolitano’s “If you see something, say something” campaign, and more.

ObamaCareless is going to be part of that stasi-brownshirt censorship agenda. Like Britain, the Amerikan government doctors will report on you to the government. Remember, now that ObamaCare is making the good doctors who don’t want to be slaves of the government leave their practices in droves, the ones who don’t mind being government employees and snitches will remain and more will be recruited.

So it won’t be merely a reduction in quality of medical care. In fact, the whole ObamaCare-pathway-to-“single-payer” scheme has nothing whatsoever to do with medical care. It has to do with control.

Daisy Luther of the Organic Prepper has this article with information on what to do in preparation of a power grid outage. The reason this is coming up is because the imbeciles who rule over us are preparing to do a power grid drill on November 13-14. It is a simulated outage drill. But if the power grid goes down, that could be a huge disaster with no electrical power and that would affect running water and food storage and cooking. It has a huge domino effect.

However, there seems to be a pattern in which a “drill” has coincided with some disaster or terrorist attack, at least in recent years. Some people believe, based on past events, that TPTB may actually cause an actual attack on the power grid at the same time, whether it is an EMP or cyber attack or direct physical sabotage, or blame it on solar flares.

Well, I believe the Rulers are probably aware that if the grid goes down, then so does much of their ability to continue doing the surveillance and their other criminal activities that gives them purpose in their precious, pathetic lives.

But there really has been a pattern of questionable past “drills” coinciding with attacks.

For instance, on September 11, 2001, the National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled a “simulated accident” consisting of a plane crashing into a building in Washington, but cancelled the event when news of the 9/11 attacks broke that morning. (AP report, same report on PrisonPlanet, more)

On the day of the Sandy Hook school shooting, an active shooter drill was being conducted only a few miles away, and many police and emergency personnel just happened to be nearby, ready and available at the time of the real shooting at Sandy Hook.

And on the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, witnesses stated that there were far more security personnel and bomb-sniffing dogs, etc. at the start and finish lines of the marathon than any past marathon, including ones in other cities. One witness, a cross country coach from Alabama, had said that officials were saying that participants should not worry and that it was just a training exercise, and that he believed there must have been some kind of threat made. (More)

So anyway, if during the November 13-14 power grid drill, the drill that will “simulate a knockout blow,” the power grid really does go out, I think we can make an accurate guess as to what the real cause will be.

You know, if I were an outsider looking in, like an alien from another planet, and seeing that these beings on “Earth” keep their energy needs and thus their very lives as vulnerable as a “power grid” keeps us, I’d think these Earthlings were nuts. You know, really loony-tunes.

This grid drill stuff is yet another reason why there really shouldn’t be a “grid,” an interconnected electrical grid of centralized dependence over which government bureaucrats have ultimate control. That is why we need to decentralize our energy so that each neighborhood, each parcel of property or household can provide its own energy needs.

David Gordon reviews Hunter Lewis’s new book on Crony Capitalism. When cronies are getting special deals by using governmental powers at the expense of others, that is not particularly honest. We need to give crony capitalism the heave-ho, in my opinion.

First, NAFTA and other “free-trade agreements” aren’t free-trade agreements at all. They are negotiated trade agreements between the governments of two nations that entail thousands of rules and regulations affecting private trading transactions between the two nations.

That’s about as far from genuine free trade as one can get. Genuine free trade is trade that is free of government rules, regulations, and control.

What should a government do to achieve genuine free trade? Simply lift all trade restrictions on its own citizens. Unilateral free trade.

In other words, don’t negotiate with anyone. Don’t enter into any “free-trade agreements.” Just liberate the citizenry to trade with anyone anywhere in the world.

Doesn’t that mean that foreign governments might still impose trade restrictions on their citizens? Sure, but why should that matter? As soon as the people of that nation see the wisdom of lifting trade restrictions, trade will immediately flow. No agreements have to be negotiated.

Second, there is no way to objectively determine what is fair. Fairness is personal and subjective. (More…)

Walter Block has this post questioning the legitimacy of Reason Foundation’s claims of being a “libertarian” institution. Perhaps it began as such, but now not so much. And Dr. Block also has this article today on the libertarian solution to the inner-city crises of gangs and violence.

And Lew Rockwell has this piece on how it is the libertarians who are the champions of the common man. (Certainly not the Left. They are the champions of the State. And certainly not the conservatives and neocons. They are the champions of the State.)

This whole security police and drug police stuff is nuts. It is entirely a criminal racket, and certainly has nothing to do with protecting Americans’ security, or enforcing drug laws. If you want to prevent terrorist attacks, then tell your government to stop provoking foreigners — yes, it’s that simple. e.g. the Kenya shopping mall attacks. That is supposedly more blowback. And the thing that is causing al-Qaeda to expand as it has been is the U.S. government’s own expanding provocations of people on their lands overseas. Cut it out with starting wars of aggression against countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, like Afghanistan and Iraq, and stop occupying their countries, stop murdering thousands of their innocent civilians, and cut it out with the damn drone terrorism and murders against foreigners. Duh! And if the government tyrannizes you because of using drugs, then really the government owns your body. If you own your own body, then the government should cut it out with this fascism stuff!

Thomas Sowell has this great piece on minimum wage madness. It’s just a matter of common sense. If you force me to pay you at a wage which is higher than what your labor is worth (to me), and if I can’t afford to pay an entry-level worker at that price, then I won’t even provide that job. Yes, it’s that simple. No wonder there are so many unemployed people whose skills are the very entry level variety that won’t get them employed because the government (and unions) have forcibly eliminated those jobs through minimum wage laws!

Infowars has this story on how a Saudi intelligence apparatchik has threatened AP reporter Dale Gavlak for a story on the Saudi regime’s arming Syrian rebels with the chemical weapons used in the now well-known August 21st attacks on civilians. The story was not for AP but for a different news source, Mint Press News, and was by another reporter who actually interviewed rebels there, although Gavlak contributed to the report. The other reporter was also threatened. Apparently, they were not threatened physically but their “careers” were threatened. Yet, the Saudis did not claim the report to be false. So really the threats were mainly the Saudis’ stupid way of admitting to the truth of the allegations.

And now the NYT has this update on the in-house fighting going on amongst Gavlak, the AP and Mint Press News.